SUPPORTING QUALITY CLINICAL CARE

Your investment in health

Alex R. weighed less than 2 pounds when he was born at 25 weeks on July 16, 2013. AMITA Health Alexian Brothers Women & Children’s Hospital, Hoffman Estates, had opened only a few months earlier, enabling Alex to receive care in a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) that was only miles from his home.

“We were on the NICU for 90 days,” says his mom Theresa. “While he faced various obstacles along his journey, we considered ourselves lucky in the grand scheme of things.”

Now, at more than two years old, “Alex is doing better than we could have ever imagined,” Theresa adds. “And it really comes down to the care he received from the doctors and nurses.” Recently, on Neonatal Nurses Day, Alex ran around the unit where his life was saved. “This year, so far, the only time we had to go to the hospital was for stitches,” Theresa says. “If you saw him, it would be so hard to believe he was 1 pound, 14 ounces.”

While Alex is thriving thanks to the specialized neonatal care he received, his family received another shock in June when Theresa was diagnosed with breast cancer. Since her bilateral mastectomy to remove the cancer, she has been utilizing donor-funded massage therapy services to help alleviate the pain of scar tissue and the stress her body bears as the result of treatment.

“You don’t fully realize what services there are or how beneficial they really are until you’re going through everything,” she says.

With AMITA Health Women & Children’s Hospital open more than two years, philanthropy continues to help ensure that specialized, compassionate care is available to families like Theresa’s.

Philanthropy paid for four additional neonatal monitoring stations and supported the neonatal transport team, says Kevin Rath, executive director of AMITA Health Women & Children’s Hospital. It enabled the hospital to expand child life services, which help ease the stress hospitalized children often experience.

“Right after Ryan got admitted, the staff at child life turned around the situation right away,” says Glenda C., whose son Ryan received emergency and inpatient care earlier this year. “Child life was able to give him the comfort he needed so we as parents could focus on what was going on and he could do the things that children love to do.”